It is starting to get colder at night; mornings, when I walk out of my room, the wind is occasionally strong enough to make me consider returning inside for a jacket. This past weekend was particularly unusual. From my room on the east side of campus, I could hear the announcer introducing the teams and the crowd's intermittent roars at the Shriner's football game. For a few moments, I thought it was a Saturday afternoon in October, and the Dartmouth football team was playing. All of these sensations recall one thing: the impending Fall term.
Every time I get that "Autumn feeling," that sense that Fall looms closely on the horizon I get a little queasy. Unlike just about everyone I know, I hate Fall term. In fact, being at Dartmouth has only made me dread the season even more. The two most stressful terms I've had here were in the fall. Freshman Fall was a crash course in Dartmouth survival &emdash; I needed to make new friends, do well in classes, begin to look towards the future and develop social skills all in the course of 10 weeks. But I made it through, somewhat exhausted and drained, and, of course, certain that I never wanted to experience anything like it again.
The remainder of my first year here was great. Sophomore Fall, however, was a disaster. I entered thinking I knew it all, and that I could conquer anything Dartmouth had to offer me. I was wrong. With half of my friends having disappeared to pledge Greek houses, and the other half far from campus on Foreign Study Programs, I felt like the only person in the universe. And having been an Undergraduate Advisor last year, I had the strange &emdash; and occasionally very unpleasant &emdash; experience of watching my own freshman year experiences being repeated by 10 different people.
At the end of sophomore fall, I felt just as exhausted and spent as I had the year before. But, once again, things eventually settled, and the rest of my year has gone quite well.
I think the reason Fall term is so daunting and difficult is that it marks a beginning - a new start to a new academic year and another step closer to the "real world." Beginnings, however, are full of doubtful questions such as, "will I do well, will I fit in, will I be happy, will I make friends, and will I learn and grow."
And yet there is something about Hanover that makes one feel as if having doubt is something criminal. Maybe it is the Fall term football games, where as a freshman your are virtually ridiculed if you are not there in your class shirt. Or maybe for sophomores, it has to do with the Greek system, where you are left to feel like an outcast if you have any doubt about joining or any fear of losing friends. Perhaps for all classes, it has something to do with Homecoming, and how in the madness of the "I love Dartmouth" frenzy that sweeps this campus, any sort of doubt about the school or your place in it is met with scorn.
Last year everyone I knew &emdash; my '96 friends and even some of the '97s in my UGA group &emdash; kept telling me, "It's Homecoming. Just have fun." But I couldn't because the doubt that was washing over me &emdash; the confusion and angst over where I stood, what I was doing where, who my friends were and where I was going &emdash; was too overwhelming for me. Fun was certainly not a consideration.
And so, I vowed never to not spend a Fall term here until senior year. I have kept that promise to myself. I will be in London this Fall on an FSP, far away from the Hanover campus. I still can't help but wonder though, what Fall term will be like for my freshmen who will be faced with the problems I confronted last year, or for the next class, dealing with the things I dealt with two years ago.
Like the seasons themselves, the Dartmouth experience is somewhat cyclical. Last year, two upperclass friends kept telling me how common my experiences were and how similar their own sophomore Fall terms had been. It was comforting, but it still didn't explain to me why everyone else was so silent about their doubt, and why everyone else, it seemed, was not experiencing any doubt at all. A year later, I know I was not alone in my doubt, even if no one else would admit theirs. The Dartmouth experience is a common one, no matter how much we proclaim ourselves as individuals. In fact, I am sure there are many people here who hate the fall as much as I do, even if they remain silent about it.
But I guess all of this silence is necessary. It forces us to look within ourselves to grow and to come up with personal solutions to our doubt. Meanwhile, I'll pass on the Fall term, and hope when I return next winter junior year won't have anything strange or daunting to offer me.
